SINGAPORE — The number of severe train delays of more than 30 minutes has increased over the last three years, even as the Government made strides in improving minor delays, said Permanent Secretary for Transport Pang Kin Keong on Thursday (Jan 12).
To improve the Republic’s rail reliability, the Government will continue to invest some S$4 billion to renew, upgrade and expand existing rail assets, over and on top of the existing S$20 billion it has committed to spending on new rail lines in the same period, added Mr Pang, who was speaking at the opening of the third joint forum on infrastructure maintenance.
Giving updates on rail performance last year, he said the mean kilometre between failure (MKBF) for incidents resulting in delays of more than five minutes recorded on the entire network increased from 133,000 train-kilometre in 2015, to 174,000 train-kilometre last year — a 30 per cent improvement.
The Downtown Line was the best performer, said Mr Pang, noting that its MBKF was 260,000 train-kilometre in 2016.
But despite all the MKBF improvements, the number of serious delays of more than 30 minutes have gone up in the past three years.
In spite of this, Mr Pang said he was confident the goal of 400,000 train-kilometre between failure by 2018 was attainable. That goal was set by Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan at the last forum in May last year.
On improvement to rail assets, Mr Pang said the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will soon be calling for a tender to replace 66 first-generation trains that currently ply the North-South and East-West lines. The trains are currently 29 years old.
The power supply systems, in use since the MRT first started in 1987, on both lines will also undergo replacement and enhancement works.
“Its upgrade should help bring down the number of disruptions caused by power malfunction,” said Mr Pang.
He also said the reliability improvements were “the result of sharply intensified maintenance regimes put in place by the operators”, along with an increase in the investment to upgrade and renew existing rail assets.
He also told members of the forum that the LTA would be expanding its monitoring tools, like the Automatic Track Inspection systems which will be used on the upcoming Downtown Line 3.
Thursday’s forum was attended by members of the rail and water communities.
